


What do you see with those eyes?

by Nary



Category: Sweeney Todd (2007)
Genre: Blood, F/M, Knifeplay, Multiple Personalities, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-16
Updated: 2010-04-16
Packaged: 2017-10-08 23:51:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/80772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nary/pseuds/Nary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Don't mix business and pleasure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What do you see with those eyes?

She watches Mr. Todd move through each day like he's in a dream, wonders just what he sees with those hollow, haunted eyes. She's afraid to ask.

They never talk about the shop while they're in bed, or the bed while they're at work. Don't mix business and pleasure, don't sully one glory with the other, don't stick fingers straight from the pies to his lips. Sometimes she doubts if Mr. Todd even remembers what they do by night when the morning rolls around, or vice versa. It's like he has to take everything they have together and lock it away somewhere deep and dark where he can't see it in order to keep going.

She touched his arm once by day, affectionate, not thinking, flour white on his cuff, and he looked at her as if she was mad, twitched away from her, brushed it off like it was nothing. It's all right. She understands. She can box up her feelings too, when she has to.

Sometimes he's almost like a different man when he comes to her bed. She thinks of him as Benjamin, this one, for he's still got a few tears to shed and a heart that pounds blood instead of ice. When he slips and calls her Lucy in the middle of a moan, the name cuts harsher than a razor, leaves more jagged edges. But she just smiles and strokes his hair and tells him to hush, love, or stops his mouth with whatever's closest, lips or hand, teats or quim. He takes his comfort from her, and even though it's not enough, still it's better than nothing.

Sometimes, though, she finds herself in bed with Sweeney. Those are the nights she comes away bleeding, but they're also the nights when she peaks so hard and so often she wonders, giddy, if all of Fleet Street can hear her. There's nothing she can do on those nights but give herself over to him, let him slide the blade over her skin like a caress while his other hand works between her legs and she tries desperately not to move. She never succeeds for long, and when she trembles or squirms, his razor gently kisses her open.

If he wanted her dead, she knows full well she'd die – this is just a game, foreplay, seeing how much control he has over his weapons, over her, a reminder that they're one and the same. When he finally gets down to the real thing, when he's in her, his weapons are teeth and nails, though the razor's always there in his fist if he needs it. He's so quiet, just a sharp hiss as he breathes in, a long, shuddering sigh when he comes at last, after he's wrung her out three or four or five times and her skin's crawling and her hands can't stop shaking.

"What do you see when you look at them, Mr. Todd?" she musters the courage to ask one grey morning as the city's just beginning to wake, as she wraps a well-stained bandage around her upper arm.

"Corpses," he replies, sitting like a statue on the edge of her bed, "cold as stone. They just don't know yet that they're dead."

"Even me?"

He turns to look at her, and his eyes are terrible. "No, not you," he says after a moment's thought. "You're not cold at all, Mrs. Lovett."


End file.
